A lover, a model and a nose

Remembering ‘jhankaar beats,’ the nineties, and ‘Aashiqui,’ which turned 25 this July.

If you were the cassette-buying type in 1990, you probably remember this image. A white background with horizontal, equidistant lines – like a page from a ruled notebook. A boy and a girl in what appears to be an embrace – only, we don’t see their faces. The boy is pulling a jacket over their heads. And around them, butterflies. Plus, this funny-sounding slogan: “Love makes life live.” I refer to Aashiqui, of course. My most favourite part of the cassette cover design is the fine print underneath the movie’s name: “Romantic Film.” I suppose this clarification was necessary in the event that – after that image of lovers, after those butterflies, after that slogan, after that title – someone mistook the boy for a vampire burying his fangs into the girl’s neck. The film completes a silver jubilee this year. Its music remains undead.

In a rediff.com interview a couple of years ago, Rahul Roy, the boy on the cassette cover, said, “Within three days, all the songs were a hit… We had only one television show to promote our songs and that was Chitrahar. Today, there are thousands of channels available across various media platforms. But after 23 years, people still remember the songs from Aashiqui.” That doesn’t necessarily mean the songs are classics. It just means that, sometimes, music isn’t just about notes and instruments and singers. It’s also about the time it’s from. A time the T-Series label was just beginning to be recognised. A time we thought Madhuri Dixit could never top Ek do teen, and she proved us wrong a couple of years later, dressed like a fisherwoman, belting out Humko aaj kal hai intezaar. A time when young lovers could look like anything from Salman Khan and Bhagyashree (Maine Pyar Kiya) to Manoj Kumar and Rekha (Clerk). A time Hindi cinema was beginning to sound like Kumar Sanu’s nose.

I watched the film again recently. It’s the kind of film you can watch on one browser window as you’re surfing on another – even so, there were things I’d forgotten about it, things that surprised me. I’ve always remembered this film as the one where Mahesh Bhatt put aside his angst and went all commercial, all hit songs and nothing else – but the Bhatt edge is very much there, right from the meet-cute, which is hardly cute. Hero sees heroine when he lands up in jail after destroying property at the venue of his father’s second marriage.

The film, thus, begins with the breakup of a relationship. And for a while, the focus is on Rahul Roy’s mother, played by Reema Lagoo. Her first scene has her bundling up her husband’s things so she can get rid of them. Among these things: her mangalsutra. She tells her son she wants to bury her “dead” love and live again. Even in his selling-out phase, Bhatt had this way of extracting characters from the amber of archetypes. The archetype here is Long-Suffering Mother, but the Lagoo character doesn’t exist simply to wipe her eyes and feed her son gajar ka halwa. She doesn’t want to be a burden. She wants to work. She wants to find herself. And she isn’t wearing castoffs. She looks glamorous. Along with actresses like Beena, Lagoo was redefining the look of the hero’s mother. He might have said: Mere paas maal hai.

Lagoo’s character finds echoes in the heroine, played by Anu Aggarwal. (She’s called Anu in the film too, though Rahul Roy keeps calling her “Annu.” His character’s name, too, is dashingly imaginative. He’s called… Rahul.) Anu has been raised in a Gothic atmosphere – an orphanage with a seething Tom Alter going on about sin and penance. And when a besotted Rahul rescues her, she says what his mother did. She wants to become something before becoming his wife. She becomes a successful model for the prestigious Parisian couture house known as “Jean Kardin.” Rahul’s mother likes Anu. She likes that she’s made something of herself. And so that Rahul can succeed too, she asks Anu not to give in to Rahul’s demand to get married. He will pressure you, because you’re successful and he’s scared of losing you… But a relationship can succeed only if it’s between equals. In 1990, these words were still somewhat unusual in a mainstream movie.

Of course, the film doesn’t veer too much into these psychological avenues. Its priorities are different – it just wants to showcase a bunch of Nadeem-Shravan songs, beginning with Saanson ki zaroorat hai jaise… Rahul Roy holds a guitar (like most Hindi-film heroes, he doesn’t actually play it) and Kumar Sanu takes over the soundtrack. I don’t care too much for this number, but I watched it with a vague kind of nostalgia. Again, it’s about the era. Anu’s belt with its loose end angling downwards, a style found on many overdressed heroines on the Cine Blitz and Movie covers of the time. The ‘I love you’ scene followed by the ‘I hate you’ scene. The hero and heroine, after a separation, finding their way to each other through a song (Jaan-e-jigar jaan-e-man). The jhankaar beats. The airport climax.

Watching pop-culture milestones from another era can be entertaining in unintended ways. Look at this man smoking inside an airport, while buying a ticket… Look at Rahul and Anu in an escalator during the Nazar ke saamne number (one of the songs I like, along with Mera dil tere liye and Ab tere bin), a couple of years before Rajinikanth, in Annamalai, would feature in the definitive escalator scene… Look at Deepak Tijori, doing that hand gesture that’s now been enshrined in two books, Arnab Ray’s May I Hebb Your Attention Pliss and Diptakirti Chaudhuri’s Kitnay Aadmi Thay. (This is how it goes: raise forearm to forehead level, use wrist as pivot, and swivel hand from side to side.) And look at how completely awkward the leads are. Rahul’s awful hairstyle and his awful way of singing, the mouth contorted as if in pain and in the throes of a primal scream. Anu’s pouting and posing.

By a freakish coincidence, as I was writing this piece, a book landed on my desk: Anusual – Memoir of a Girl Who Came Back from the Dead. It was by Anu Aggarwal. (The universe, clearly, was leaving no stone unturned in prodding me to write about Aashiqui.) In the book, Mahesh Bhatt calls her and says, “Aashiqui is based on your life, Anu, will you play Anu Varghese, the lead, in it?” In other words, Anu Aggarwal, the top Indian model, would play Anu Varghese. In the film, Anu is faced with a choice between a lover in India and a modelling career in Paris. The real Anu faced a similar choice: To do Aashiqui or hurry back to “Laurent the art dealer and restaurateur in Paris who had aroused me?” In both cases, Bollywood romance trounced the city of love.

The chapter on Aashiqui is short but fascinating. I spluttered at the bit about Bhatt asking Anu to prepare for this tinselly part by reading Love in the Time of Cholera – but it does sound like something Bhatt would do. He probably thought he was making a timeless romance, and she probably bought it – they do come across as two people on the same wavelength. In a Hindustan Times interview from a couple of years ago, Anu said of Bollywood, “I think its universe had opened its bathrobe for me. I saw everything that there really is to see.” Bhatt has taught her well.

Great post, Rangan. BTW ever wondered how in today’s age, none of the former Bollywood celebs (e.g. from the 90s or later) cede the spotlight and quietly disappear like stars from the 80s did like Kimi Katkar or Meenakshi Shishadri or Padmini Kohlapure? Karishma, Raveena, etc all seem to be forever in the celebrity circuit even when none of them are actually working steadily in Bollywood, maybe except someone like Urmila Matondkar who seems to have disappeared (at least, relatively speaking).

As for Ashiqui, I agree that Reema Lagoo was so young and stunning in this movie! Absolutely beautiful but its a shame that only a few of us notice her beauty or Beena’s for that matter (in the 80s movies) 🙂

Watching Asshiqui right now. I can’t help but be disappointed by no mention of the genial, ever-welcome (to me) presence of Avatar Gill. I can’t recall how many times he’s featured in my movie-related childhood memories 🙂

Sorry for the multiple comments, but I just couldn’t help sharing my thoughts as they pop into my mind. I have a theory as to why for a viewer like myself, performers like Avtar Gill and Reema Lagoo stick out in all and sundry films I watch them in, and why their performances “speak” to me far more eloquently than those of the leads. Its likely because for me, these people exist only within the dimensions of their performance/roles in those movies. They don’t exist beyond the arc lights whereas the movie stars show up in all sorts of places online or in the print media even someone relatively reclusive like Rahul Roy (who was around quite a bit a few years back because of a reality show or some such). That’s why I like when moviestars of yore quietly disappear into oblivion. It makes me more likely to focus on their performances alone, and not one their off-screen personalities that they project to the audience and media at large.

LOL! That was also the era when heroes and leading ladies would sit beside the piano and pretend to play it. I remember Bahut Pyar karte hain from Saajan. Madhuri Dixit sitting beside the piano (smoke coming from it.LOL!), pretending to play it.

Why is there so much buzz about aashiqui’s 25th anniversary. It was such a ordinary film, it wasnt even a cult film. Even its music has dated.I don’t think that it was a trendsetter. QSQT and Maine pyar kiya had already ushered in the musical romantic blockbuster whose superstars still remain superstars. Aamir khan’s dil released in the same year was a bigger sensation and trendsetter

There were so many better movies in 90. How about ghayal, RK santhoshi’s first film. I was quite surprised there was no mention of it anywhere in the media. Or agneepath, bachchan’s national award winning turn.

Or parinda which was vidhu viñod chopras first attempt at a mainstream film. It was a precursor to all the bhai films that would be made by RGV later. Brangan would love to hear your views about that

Brangan, I was quite disappointed that you had nothing funny or nothing much to say about jhankar beats after featuring it prominently in the heading. Reminded me about your piece about misleading headlines

I spluttered. Thank heavens I wasn’t drinking my tea. 🙂 And that last paragraph was sheer gold.

I remember watching Aashiqui. I think one of the reasons it became such a huge hit is because the music – even if not very great by the standard of the Golden Age – suddenly brought melody back into the cacophony that passed for music in the 80s. The story wasn’t great, the leads were more wooden than the tree in my backyard, but I don’t think I knew anyone at that time who hadn’t watched the film.

“That was also the era when heroes and leading ladies would sit beside the piano and pretend to play it.”

@Raj Balakrishnan, have you seen the “Mazhayin Thuliyile” song from “Chinna Thambi Periya Thambi?” In that song, Nadhiya supposedly plays the piano out in the pouring rain! And, if that were not enough, the interludes have tabla and other instruments…except the piano! Lovely song to hear though…

I could be wrong, but I think when most people look back at Maine Pyra Kiya or Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak they first and foremost think of their male leads, who are still around and going strong so it’s hard to feel too nostalgic about those films. On the other hand, when people think of Aashiqui it’s the music that comes to mind first, the kind of music we rarely get to hear nowadays. I don’t think the stars of Aashqiui ever made much of an impression.

Just how bad were the 90s? I am confused these days. Actually I grew up in the 90s so you’d think I’d be forgiving of the decade’s flaws but I was exposed to a lot of Hollywood starting with Jurassic Park (dubbed in Hindi 😀 ). So I began to dislike some aspects of Bolly/Kolly films. These days, on the other hand, I relate better to the innocent simplicity of the times as Bolly becomes more and more mannered and cold. I wonder if this also has to do with the changing image of India that Indians have. Life was simple in the 90s because we all knew we lived in a third world country and tried to make the most of it. Perhaps the movies of the time too reflected this outlook and made up for general shoddiness, tackiness with infectious energy and spontaneity. Now with our need to project ourselves as a superpower with the largest population of impoverished in the world, things have understandably got more complicated. This argument may seem convoluted but Javed Akhtar himself has said that society has not been sending clear signals to the filmmakers for the last several years and this confusion according to him is reflected in the movies.

As for the film, I never watched Aashiqui as a kid and later on never felt like catching up. But the songs were still all over the place. One thing about many of the hits from the time is even if you’ve heard them just once, they get stuck in your head. So I came across Ab Tere Bin Jee Lenge Hum after years and found I knew the tune almost by heart. It’s irritating actually because I don’t want to remember that tune! It was not a bad soundtrack and some of the songs had potential if only they hadn’t been rendered by Kumar Sanu and Anuradha Podwal. The Udit Narayan song was pretty good.

Brangan, oh yes there is a lot of buzz whipped up. Rahul Roy had been all over the TV channels. Hrithik and sonam kapoor are making a new video of the ashiqui title song.

Well conspicuously, the only people missing are nadeem and shravan- the real heroes of the film. One is in exile from the country- for killing the producer of this film no less and the other has totally disappeared from the scene.

MANK that’s a good point. Aashiqui was not a trendsetter, not even musically. Yes the music was a rip roaring success but Anand Milind had already ushered in the new wave with QSQT. I guess the success of Aashiqui 2 has revived interest in the film. There’s no doubt that the music of the film lived well beyond its box office run but there were lots of hit soundtracks in the 90s, including many by Nadeem Shravan. So it’s not like Aashiqui got singled out for recall value. What with SRK delivering hit after hit, by the mid 90s Aashiqui and Rahul Roy were both forgotten.

BR: I was a little disturbed by that ‘maal’ reference. From what I’ve heard from a couple of Hindi-speaking friends, I knew they list it as a word not used in decent speech. Your yahoo! link confirms the same. Was that half-pun worth such stooping?

What are you saying? Of course it was a trendsetter, if only because it ushered in a Kumar Sanu-Anuradha Paudwal wave. You may not care for the music, but the Nadeem-Shravan “sound” was pretty much established by this film, and that was the sound we heard for almost a decade — just like the Laxmikant-Pyarelal “sound” defined the 1980s.

Yes, Anand-Milind ushered in a new wave etc., but they were to N-S what RD Burman was to L-P in the 80s. Theirs was nothing compared to the N-S wave, built up largely by T Series’s backing.

Again, I’m not talking quality — just saying that this film did set a trend.

Iswarya: I realise this too. While writing the piece, I justified it saying that this is how a Hindi film hero of that time would have said something (this was the Govinda-Kader Khan heyday, after all) — but seeing it in print made it look weird.

Eh, I don’t particularly care for either album but I just don’t hear the big leap from QSQT to Aashiqui. It’s the same sound, maybe even a bit of a retread to LP. Aashiqui was incomparably more commercially successful than QSQT but it’s not as if only the most commercially successful album sets the trend. QSQT was a hit album by new composers with new singers and it set the trend that Aashiqui rode on in a much bigger way. If an album has to be regarded as a trendsetter, it has to offer something fresh and different from what has passed and I don’t hear it on Aashiqui. I also don’t think it was just the NS sound that dominated the 90s. There was also an Anu Malik sound and a Jatin Lalit sound plus a certain A R Rahman. You could argue that AM and JL are very slight variations of the NS sound and I would agree but point to QSQT as the beginning.

Dil hai ki maanta nahin, Saajan, Jo Jeeta wohi sikander …all had some songs that I liked and still don’t mind listening to today. Pehla Nasha is an all time favorite.

What the current day composers lack is the ability to engage a listener from beginning to end just on the strength of the tunes. They make it look like as if all tunes have been exhausted and they have to labor really hard and pull their hair out to come out with something that doesn’t sound like something else. On the film making front at least I see some fresh ideas (maybe because there is a lot to catch up there with “world cinema”) but indian film music as a genre is heading directionless. I had this bleak thought about 15 yrs back that the genre was saturated and there would be no new megatrends after Rahman. I am actually living through that reality. Sad. It really gives you another new found level of respect for true pioneers like MSV. Their breed might become extinct, if not already.

Vijay: The basic sound of our film music has become very dense and layered, relying more on evoking a certain ambience and atmosphere rather than hooks. You do get hooks of some sort in the dance tracks but the romantic numbers are the ones that have taken a real beating due to this change in approach.

It actually holds true for the movies too. Even abroad. Yes there are great films being made both here and in Holly but they are mostly complicated and demanding (for the viewer that is). Nobody just stages simple situations and scenes, relying on the charisma of the stars to pull it off. If we take the Nolan-Batman movies which are now widely regarded as the best Batman series on the big screen, they are also pretty complex (considering it’s just a comic book adaptation) with a lot of subtexts. There’s not one scene in the entire trilogy like the one where Bruce Wayne and Selina Kyle go unmasked to the Halloween party, recognise each other (as in Batman and Catwoman) without saying so whilst making love to each other. That’s the kind of scene that relies more on emotions (and no small amount of ‘glamour’) than conceptual brilliance. I am not saying one is better than the other; just that the complexity in even popular art intended for the consumption of a large audience has gone up like anything. Ilayaraja may be offered as a counterpoint (pun fully intended) to that but he too relied on relatively accessible melodies supported by complex harmony and arrangements in the 80s. The tunes themselves became dense only much later.

And there may be some of us (who grew up on the ‘old’ model) that grapple with this change or at least recognise that something has changed but mostly the audience seems to be enjoying it. So I wonder if this is the effect of living in a computer age where too much simplicity just doesn’t cut it anymore in art. There’s a “we have seen it all before” cynicism now and the artists have to work much harder to surprise the audience. One helpful device to mask the paucity of a really strong hook is to make it complicated so that the audience is forced to listen a few times/watch with their brains intact (as opposed to the leaving it outside the cinema hall cliche). And the sheer effort of doing so might compel them to look for positives and slowly start liking it.

I think I’m going to merge my comment on this post and the ‘Bajrangi Bhaijan’ one together:

Your post is hilarious (as usual) and now I have to see Clerk! 😉 I wasn’t that familiar with the songs of either Aashiqui or QSQT, but was repeatedly inflicted with the film ‘Maine Pyar kiya’ growing up… ok, I exaggerate, it’s not so bad, and a few of the songs are nice. The film was/is a great favourite of my parents, and as a result I’ve seen it multiple times. Bhagyashree strongly resembled my mother then, and the film has a sort of sentimental value for my parents. That one film has also made my parents long-standing Salman Khan loyals. So while I have, over the last decade, come to think of the guy as basically a thug, he is one of my dad’s favourite stars. According to him, I’m just terribly prejudiced against poor Salman. Anyways, last week I put my ‘prejudices’ aside and went to see Bajrangi Bhaijaan and really enjoyed it.

The last half hour is pure corn as you put it (I thought it kind of detracted from the rest of the film) but aside from that there is so much to like! Salman’s character was very endearing, Nawazuddin did a really good job (I think it’s the first film I’ve seen with him) and Kareena was also effective. She didn’t have a purely decorative role as some of the other reviews suggested. I also thought that this film broached the subject of cross-border amity and understanding in a far superior way to PK. I thought PK was on the whole entertaining. It sought to raise basic questions about religion, and was arguably successful in that endeavour. However, it unconsciously did so in a way which reinforced pre-existing prejudices regarding certain practices and modes of worship amongst the majority community. Bajrangi Bhaijaan sets a different tone. The basis on which it envisages peace, bhaichara etc is on terms of mutual respect. No one can force any other person to think in a certain way, and we are all (and should be) at perfect liberty to hold independent views regarding religion (our own and that of others). Pawans’s religiosity, and for much of the film insularity, is obviously essential to this film’s purpose. Not only does he overcome his own aversion to Muslims in saving munni, but the message to the other side is equally loud and clear, this hunuman bhakt was inspired by his own faith as well love for munni to do something good. At the very least the film envisages respect for the adherents of other faiths (which may have tenets which are pretty antithetical to you own belief system). The guy Kabir Khan is selling to Muslims is not some suave polished man, already well-versed in the virtues of secularism. He changes for the better, and his muslim equivalents should also learn to be more respectful of other people.

Does the film idealise the common Pakistani, and over-estimate the goodwill on the other side? Perhaps. Are there individuals in Pakistan who are deeply unhappy about what is happening in their county, and want excellent relations with India? Of course. I don’t think that necessarily reflects majority sentiment though. It has something to do with the fact that a very distorted history is taught in that country (to a much higher degree than in India) and is up for popular consumption. E.g. I think Abdul- Ghaffar Khan is painted as some kind of cowardly traitor to the Pakistan cause, and a lackey of Gandhi in Pakistani school textbooks… and that’s just one tiny example, I’ve read that the word ‘Hindu’ rarely appears in school textbooks with ‘cunning’ or ‘shrewd’ attached to it. … But I did not at all regard this movie as unnecessary or as a waste of time, because Art can also inspire life. Apparently, this film is a huge hit in Pakistan, and I hope many people take away from it.

Sorry, i meant ‘without cunning or shrewd’…and when i spoke about PK reinforcing pre-existing prejudices regarding modes of worship amongst the majority, i was speaking about practices and modes of worship adoptedr@ by majority community, though ideally i shouldn’t be speaking in terms of majority/minority.